The fashion for dark realism seems to have permeated even Historical dramas. I suppose they think it underpins the characters with an Earthy veritas and makes them, and their circumstances, seem more real. It is true that the doings on the Cornish coast were pretty dreadful but to depict it in such uniformly depressing tones leaves no room for the light of moral comparison to shine in. It's as if the Human Condition is depicted as black paint on a black canvas. We're all doomed and there's no point in trying.
This is the stuff of Literature, we are tempted to think, but, unfortunately, this dark cynicism has not so much given it a Literary sheen but rather the ambiance of a bucket of mud from a marshy strand, full of ugly little creatures all trying to escape from their dire surroundings.
The trouble with being too realistic is that Reality is often dull, dour and boring and so to take this attitude when dramatising an Historical novel is really, to drain the romance, and thus the entertainment, from the history. Dickens and Shakespeare, and more recently Ripper Street, have a sort of parallel historical verity by the action being enhanced by beautiful dialogue and richly drawn characters. This dramatisation of Jamaica Inn, however, seems to have reduced Literary endeavours to incoherent grunts, curses and prosaic railings against the brutality of life.
I had to stop myself from wistfully hoping that the grim, marshy landscape would be transformed into the polished cobbles of Westward Ho and that the Inn would have a Shepperton makeover to turn it into a shiny Admiral Benbow complete with picturesque pirates and colourful redcoats but, unfortunately, we were stuck, until the final squalid thrashings, with undifferentiated mud and gloom. Our heroine was failed by the absence of the best traditions of female literary creations, and became, not so much a plucky young lass, but just another creature floundering in the mire of the marshes.
So when poor Mary Yellan rode off into the sunset with her mud-coloured horse-thief, we could only shrug with the dire certainty that she was merely riding slap-bang (with a guttural grunt)into the mud-encrusted side of the bucket.
This is the stuff of Literature, we are tempted to think, but, unfortunately, this dark cynicism has not so much given it a Literary sheen but rather the ambiance of a bucket of mud from a marshy strand, full of ugly little creatures all trying to escape from their dire surroundings.
The trouble with being too realistic is that Reality is often dull, dour and boring and so to take this attitude when dramatising an Historical novel is really, to drain the romance, and thus the entertainment, from the history. Dickens and Shakespeare, and more recently Ripper Street, have a sort of parallel historical verity by the action being enhanced by beautiful dialogue and richly drawn characters. This dramatisation of Jamaica Inn, however, seems to have reduced Literary endeavours to incoherent grunts, curses and prosaic railings against the brutality of life.
I had to stop myself from wistfully hoping that the grim, marshy landscape would be transformed into the polished cobbles of Westward Ho and that the Inn would have a Shepperton makeover to turn it into a shiny Admiral Benbow complete with picturesque pirates and colourful redcoats but, unfortunately, we were stuck, until the final squalid thrashings, with undifferentiated mud and gloom. Our heroine was failed by the absence of the best traditions of female literary creations, and became, not so much a plucky young lass, but just another creature floundering in the mire of the marshes.
So when poor Mary Yellan rode off into the sunset with her mud-coloured horse-thief, we could only shrug with the dire certainty that she was merely riding slap-bang (with a guttural grunt)into the mud-encrusted side of the bucket.